​A few years back, I started a blog on Tumblr. Again. This was more or less my third try at consistent blogging; I had abandoned WordPress and a previous Tumblr URL because of sheer boredom. Because, for a writer, I’m a terrible blogger. I wanted a better place to talk about the process than a few vague blurbs on Facebook, even if it was to myself. My current Tumblr, “Faire Lady Penumbra,” has been my home since. The day I created the blog, I tag-lined myself “The Oddly Extroverted Novelist,” and hoped to change it later. To this day, this tag-line is what I get the most questions about.

“I’m an extroverted writer too! Do you have any tips for writing?”

“My friend doesn’t think there are extroverted writers out there…”

“How do you stay so organized? I’m outgoing and have such a hard time…”

I never did end up changing the line. Instead, I turned my platform into an open space to discuss personality and art. It's a somewhat overlooked realm of extroverted creative work, especially where writers are concerned. Novelists are considered solemn quiet creatures, locked away in offices with notebooks, coffee-stained clothes and typewriters that we will someday throw against walls in a fit of writer's block. The extroverted writer is treated as The Last Unicorn, an oddity to the outside world.

To be fair, I stick my notes to anything I can stick them to, but extroverted writers don't always align with stereotypes. We dwell in sunlit Starbucks corners and wander the streets in search of more stories. We haunt Twitter and Facebook, posting to our friends in lieu of creative dry spells. We are the verbal species of storyteller, forever ecstatic to share in some way. We bring our processes in a bag, unpacking it anywhere, forming habits and creating space in the middle of crowds. I personally love the sensation of writing at a cafe with headphones in. “I am alone, but not truly,” I tell people. “I have the power to create space. I can observe the world from my own window.” But I can write pretty much anywhere it strikes my fancy, from the comfort of my sofa to a bumpy bus ride through European mountains.

I suppose I don’t think myself fully extroverted—more of an introvert who plays an extrovert well. I have more novel ideas than close friends and have limits to how much socialization I can manage before I need to vanish back into my own worlds. I bounce back and forth between the world’s greatest socialite and ignoring my Facebook messages for days on end (apologies for that, friends). It’s a difficult process to explain, since I don’t necessarily need the company of others but I draw a lot of creative energy from it. There is a beautiful marriage between life and art. People are made of stories, and stories made by people. My characters are fueled by fires that I have seen in the eyes of others and by the wonderful quirks that make us so human.

Likewise, I am as much a night owl as I am a cafe dweller. There is solace in returning home with a day's worth of inspiration and spinning its magic through the night. I enjoy silence, in small doses at least, and make use of it as I organize my thoughts to better effect. Furthermore, some of my closest friendships have come from 3:00 a.m. conversations when I'm not writing. Other extroverted writers I know have their own habits and rituals. Some of us keep more presence while we write, sharing process through the window of social media. Some of us shut away our work until the time is right. All of us are usually up at 3:00 a.m., chatting away before we settle back into our scenes and return to work.​So, here's to the extroverted writers. We're not so different from our introverted counterparts in what we do. To the wandering, expressive and outgoing among us. A little different in our energy and style, but drawing from the same world and interpreting it with the same gusto. Really, we are, all of us, writers first and foremost.

​An interesting phenomenon turned up during the recent release of Rogue One, the darker, more tragic addition to the Star Wars films. Despite having a completely new cast to market and work from, many of the ads focused on a single appearance: Darth Vader. Now, Vader isn’t in this movie very long and his presence only affects the plot in marginal ways, yet all anyone could talk about was the incredible last scene where Vader completely massacres a group of rebels just to get the Death Star plans.

Will I complain as a Star Wars fan? Never. I got to see Darth friggin’ Vader on the big screen for the first time.

Not Anakin, not the underwhelming cameo in Revenge of The Sith. Actual, awesome, terrifying Darth Vader that struck fear into hearts back in the 70’s.

Behind every great hero is an even better villain. Something fun and dark lurks in a well-written antagonist, and while we aren’t rooting for them, we relish having them to act as a moral counterpoint. Their popularity has since led to a growing trend of villain-lead stories; comics and stories centered around Darth Vader, or Loki from The Avengers, or The Joker from Batman. Anime and manga haven’t shied from this either, giving the world Kira of Death Note and Lelouch v Britanna of Code Geass. Villains suddenly act as their own protagonist, and deal with their own antagonists.

The villain lead has taken on a new importance, whether it be in origin stories as with Fairest and Heartless by Marissa Meyer (books that focus on The Queen of Hearts and Levena, Meyer’s science fiction reincarnation of Snow White’s Evil Queen). Or with outright antagonistic protagonists, as with the popular Six of Crows books by Leigh Bardugo. Characters who aren’t always saved, nor do they want to be. Leads capable of crime and debauchery all the way to end.

Of course, we can point fingers at the Hot Topic-esque marketing monstrosity that is Suicide Squad for leading the recent march, but villainous protagonists have existed for much longer. Macbeth is an outright murderer, driven by his own ache of power and paranoia. Dorian Gray uses, abuses, and kills to protect his cursed secret. Humbert Humbert justifies lust and control to satisfy his own meek existence. All the main voices of their story, opening their minds to the audience and sharing in their worlds.

Now, not all leads are created equal. While a Harley Quinn can be charmingly chaotic, main characters for novels like Lolita and A Clockwork Orange are unquestionably perverse and wicked. Monsters that edge passed a moral horizon and beyond what much of the audience is comfortable with. Are these, the truly diabolical, meant for antagonistic roles alone?

When putting the more controversial leads into perspective, it’s important to remember that we are all the protagonist in our own mind. We are all heroes, even when our choices are not so heroic and not so brave. The truly evil, in real life, are not those aware they are committing wrongdoing, but those who justify their own wrongdoing as something right or morally just (this is a sound tip for writing villains, by the way. I stand by this rule for my antagonists).

Does that make these characters purely irredeemable? Not always. Even true villains like Darth Vader technically earn a chance to do the right thing, and many other more villainous leads get a chance at the same redemption. But all the same, does every not-so-good protagonist need redemption to be likable? Can a villain not simply do what villains do best?

The best example lies in a widely popular story, that almost wasn’t the same story. In the original final chapter of A Clockwork Orange, Alex realizes the error of his violent ways and changes himself, which sounds pleasant enough. Yet when the novel was released in the US and adapted, editors and filmmakers saw fit to remove the last chapter, effectively voiding Alex’s recovery and leaving him as a vicious psychopath. While the author himself never cared for this new ending, many readers and viewers agreed that Alex’s change would have defeated the point of the story. The very real, raw idea that sometimes, no matter what happens, people are purely content to be monsters. ​So, perhaps some villains are just villains, and they are best written that way. And perhaps we, as readers, enjoy exploring the more complex layers of these characters. Often darkness makes for the best stories.

​I was seven when I first knew I wanted to tell stories. Seven, small, and a very eager Girl Scout on a trip to the Children’s World Fair in New Orleans. This is a large cultural festival hosted by the local children’s museum, and it features several countries every year, complete with food and elaborate décor. I held up my entire troop in the India room one year, when they hosted a storyteller (this was the coolest job in the world to me; why I do this now).

I found out she exclusively told Indian fairytales, which surprised my seven-year-old self, since they too had a Cinderella and Rapunzel; never quite the same as the English (or Disney) versions, but similar enough to recognize. I went home to search Google, and found out that there were a lot of Cinderella and Rapunzel stories in the world. Little me suddenly understood something that has remained as cornerstone of fiction: shared ideas.

Storytellers are a little like The Borrowers, of the famous Mary Norton novels. “Borrowers borrow,” and writers are much the same. Small and busy, we gather pieces in the shadows of our legendary forbearers and cobble together something of our own. A touch of folklore here, a dash of an archetype there. Never the bits that people will miss; iconic characters, threads of plot, or paragraphs of writing. That would be stealing, wouldn’t it?

Or would it?

If you found yourself in a bookstore or movie theatre in the last decade, you probably noticed a boom in the retelling. Not adaptations of an original novel, but sequels, spin-offs, or alternate universes for the novel by other, newer authors. Lewis Carroll’s famous Alice in Wonderland novels have been subject to so many re-imagined variations that it’s become trite. There’s Tim Burton’s movies, American McGee’s Alice horror game series, The Looking Glass Wars, Once Upon a Time, Alice in Zombieland, Alice in The Country of Hearts, Pandora Hearts… (including the full-ish list of Alice-based works here, because jeez- it’s long).

This seems odd, since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a novel. It’s not some anonymous piece of folklore passed from a culture; it’s Carroll’s words and creations. It could be argued that Carroll borrowed from his culture first (and he does), but now it seems that the storyteller becomes as much a part of the borrowed works as the work he originally borrowed from.

Carroll isn’t alone in these ranks. Jane Austen, Frank L. Baum, Mary Shelley, J.M. Barrie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- to name a few! Their works not only inspired people to share their works, but retell them in new novels, movies, and TV series. Inventive projects like Showtime’s Penny Dreadful even go far as putting different characters from these books in the same world, often with dangerous, entertaining, and scandalous results.

But the question remains, is this trend a good one? At first glance, these books, movies, and shows appear little more than legal fan fiction for classic works. Literary mincemeat, re-churning of ideas and tropes, slopped onto a plate of familiar characters and popular stories. There’s a huge outcry for “original content” on the internet after all these recent retellings. “Where are all the new stories? Why can’t writers stop being hacks and write something of their own?” The masses are a little tired seeing new reincarnations of Alice and Elizabeth Bennet, it seems.

But let’s wrap back around to fan fiction for a moment, because fanfics are still a hugely popular kind of writing and their entire basis is borrowing. And not just from YA novels and Star Wars, but from sources like fairytales, Greek mythology, and even the Bible. Say what you might about fanfics, but the idea behind good fan fiction is that a story can build upon the source material while respecting canon, or a story that brings something new to the table without losing the heart of the original (being “too OOC” as we say).

Let’s hop further back now, to works like the collected adventures of Robin Hood and the many plays of William Shakespeare. To King Arthur and his legends. To mythology from the Greeks and Celts. These stories did not exist in a bubble, but drew their strength from older stories and myths. They carry in them ancient bones, placed long before we knew to write our stories down. We, in turn, borrow from these works without much thought at all. The authors of classics simply followed in the footsteps of more faceless storytellers.

So, where do these retellings stand in the place of literary history? Is it always disrespectful to draw new life from books like Pride & Prejudice or Phantom of The Opera, or are writers simply carrying on old traditions? Are an author’s works truly sacred, or do we all simply join the ranks of other storytellers by creating a new layer of cultural lore? Are Alice and Elizabeth untouchable, or are they no different from Persephone and Athena? Archetypes for a new age.​Time will tell which of these stories remain important in the long term, but until then, we are free as Borrowers to continue our respectful borrowing. We will continue to cobble, create, and reinvent, paying tribute to stories and characters while passing them into the hands of new readers.

(Can also be read on Academia, my side-blog project with Dr. Joshua Grasso).

​This weekend was an exciting one for bookish fanbases with the release of Netflix’s newest series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, a collection of adventures centered around the orphaned Baudelaire siblings and their notorious enemy, Count Olaf. The hype has been quite big for awhile: this is actually the second version of the popular middle grade series. Most readers would be happy enough to forget the first theatrical film by Nickelodeon and everything it brought with it though (I still personally cringe at the thought of the screeching, flailing take Jim Carrey had on the series’ main villain). The movie’s presence left permanent scars on the series.

What is it about the movie-from-novel transition that is so harmful though? As we’ve seen in recent years, with films like Lemony Snicket or Eragon, or more recently- The Giver (see? I just cringed again), these movies can become deterrents from the original novel. If your first experience with a story is a Frankenstein’s Monster-like version of its content, you may never pick up the book or discover the actual story the author intended.

Recently, t’s feeling like a book can’t even hit the shelf without first selling film rights; many publishers do reserve those rights ahead of time too, just in case, you know? It’s no surprise. As Harry Potter and Twilight climbed the ranks of popular fiction, their movies became larger-than-life franchises and gateways to the books for movie-goers. So everything gets a movie now, “and quickly! Before the audience loses interest and doesn’t care about this novel anymore. Who cares if some of the more literary themes in this book don’t make sense in a film?”

And here lies the larger problem: books aren’t movies, and movies aren’t books. The strongest film adaptations of novels are the ones that express the heart of the film itself, without being a direct scene-for-scene cut of the story, or you know? Not attempting to be the story at all.

The botched Hollywood adaptation isn’t a new concept. Speaking of Frankenstein, it’s well noted that Mary Shelley’s original novel has almost never been directly adapted to the screen and the film version barely resembles the book or its characters (seriously, who is Igor and why is Victor suddenly a doctor?). This may be because Frankenstein so delicately detailed with literary themes. The overtones of responsibility, inner darkness, and atonement are something the narration and writing evoke, and they almost cannot be shown to the audience in a visual sense. What Shelley conveys in Frankenstein would be meaningless on the big screen.

There is a similar issue with novels like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where both famous versions only resemble their novels by name and concept. Many of the socio-political themes are lost in favor of lighter, less historical fare. Are we right to call Hollywood out for this? Is it fair to a contemporary audience that we include Alice’s Victorian-era political commentary, or Oz’s allusions to 19th century American gold standard debates? These issues were, after all, products of their era. These movies are both very popular, and whether or not we like it, they’re often the first experience people have with these stories. They were the films that introduced me to these novels, in fact, and while I don’t care for them as much as my younger self did, one cannot help but wonder if more movies are capable of this. Can a movie serve as a well-made gateway to the novel without bastardizing the content?(Source: Classic editions of several novels, noted for their widely differences from their movies. Yes, that includes The Wind in The Willows, but we won’t get into Disney for now).

I found my answer by way of Neil Gaiman. A lover of experiments and a creative force of nature, Gaiman has done a great deal of screenwriting, but only allowed his original works on the big screen/television handful of times. He reserves the right to be picky, but tries to give each adaption a promise of new experience, rather than being a straight retelling. This is incredibly evident with the 2007 film, Stardust. Searching the reviews for the original novel, it isn’t unusual to encounter readers who grabbed the book because the movie, and who are surprised (or shocked perhaps) at the differences between the versions. Indeed the novel of Stardust reads more like classic a Brothers Grimm folktale, complete with all its brutal violence and sexual themes. There are complex ideas about loss, forgiveness, and growing up. There are hints of English folklore and the old implications of respecting the fae. As a result, several rewrites were done on the movie’s script to help the story along, because many of these ideas and concepts simply did not translate to a screen; Gaiman approved the changes happily. This actually allowed the movie to breathe and expand the universe of Stardust, giving the viewer a fuller, different version of the fairytale without taking away from the original. And funny thing… it works! As it worked in the recent radio show version of Stardust, which is actually read from the perspective of one of the characters, rather than 3rd person. All versions of the story are distinct, and all of them are particularly good. So what is the answer to a strong film adaptation? Do creators need more of a hand in these projects, as with Neil Gaiman, or as Daniel Handler has done with the recent Netflix version of of A Series of Unfortunate Events? Do filmmakers need to be less hasty in churning out new movies for a supposedly impatient audience? Or does a quality of these films lie in something far more complex?

There is an art to adapting a story, just as there is an art to telling a story. What works in the format of a film may not work in the format of a novel, or vice versa. While you can never please everyone with the way a story is retold, it makes a great of sense for certain ideas or scenes to change, or end up cut, if they cannot translate into a film. And actually, that’s not a bad thing as long as the new story retains the heart of the original, or at least tries to be of the same quality. From plays in ancient Greece to oral folklore, we do like revisiting our old stories in new mediums, and we still enjoy seeing that today, whether on the screen or stage or Netflix series. There is merit in expecting something memorable and well-written though, and that can mean the difference between outstanding and more Eragons.

The above image is my most favorite meme about authors. I encountered it while hunting down images for a particular week of social media posts for Inkitt.com. I saved it for later, because it reminded me so very much of the community I managed at the time.

This piece has been more of a piece-in-progress for several months now, since every day in my former job was 3/4’s learning, and I had to grow with it each time I found something new. A bit of background info: in May 2015, I was invited to check out a very small, personable writing website named Inkitt. Having just started the final draft of Chimehour and wanting to build a readership for my planned indie novel, I was intrigued. My attempts at promotion with Wattpad and Goodreads had fallen flat, so I polished my first two chapters again and gave the site a shot. A very long and incredible road later, I became the community’s leader and popular reviewer, and my story hadn’t done too badly either. I assisted in the management of Inkitt’s authors (something the site had struggled with in the past)... so six months later, I had seen a lot. I experienced a lot. I spent every weekend in international conference calls that branched from Australia to Iraq. I had moderated AMAs with authors who were simply grateful for their ten followers who brought questions, or with Alan Tudyk, whose amazing, energetic personality alone drew crowds. It was a phenomenal, tireless, busy, annoying, and wonderful job in so many ways. It brings new surprises and incredible opportunities with every passing day.

Authors are just like all artists at the core: we are painters with words and sculptors of prose. But authors cannot be compared to, say, rock stars. They are a private and gentle company. They are quiet creatures who feed on late hours and passionate moods. They dwell, work, express, and share from under their quiet spaces, sharing little of themselves besides that. I am no exception to the rule, and often keep to myself as a creative type. Inkitt wasn’t my first community either, I had spent most of my early teen years lurking around Fanfiction.net, RP forums, and YouTube—to name a few. I had long been around the horse with other creative types. But it was never so obvious to me that other authors behaved the same way I did, not until I was the keeper of their corner of the Internet. We were the other to the Wattpads and FictionPresses of the net: a motley crew of authors who meant business, who loved literature. We were the foundations of a beginning; we were, for a moment, something tangibly different and beautiful. For a moment, we were writers, united in our solitude.

It was a tough job. It was early mornings for my Berlin crew and late nights for the U.S. It was presentation, prep, and a lot of pressure after I became the site’s sole American representative. Working with writers, so I learned, required a kind of bedside manner and humanity that companies can’t provide. Some days, I was organizer and hostess, always planning and presenting ideas to better my community. Some days, I felt like babysitter, keeping peace in a diverse and passionate community. Most days though, I felt like an author and equal, exchanging ideas and stories over Skype with my fellow writers, building ties for a strong community while we traded drafts. It never felt like work to expand my friendships, perhaps because it never felt like I was doing it for work anyway. I’m a big believer in finding one’s tribe; the people who are as passionate about something as you. I found that in Inkitt’s community, and we made for excellent company. My job became as personal as it was professional, and there was nothing quite like it. A realness ebbed through conversations and in every big project. It was incredible when you could reach out to so many people, from so many places, and make something work. It was the Internet’s magic at its finest.

I had to part ways with Inkitt not long ago, due to differences and school schedules. I have returned to my usual author business and hung up my manager badge for the moment, but its lessons and adventures promise to stay for a long time to come. There was something valuable and eye-opening to taking on such a challenging role, and I am wholly grateful for what it’s instilled in me since. I am equally as grateful for its community. I hope many of my companions have since stayed in contact, those connections outlasting the site and growing well past it. Perhaps we can form our own writing community some day. I can only be encouraged after the past year of experience, and hopeful for all the possibilities that have opened up since.

​During Labor Day weekend, I caved, turned on Netflix, and watched it. You know very well what ‘it’ I am referring to- I know you do. Unless you live in a cave (or were out of the states during its release, like me), you saw the ripples of Stranger Things across the Internet over the summer. The title-card-turned-meme, the fanart, and the endless stream of season 2 theories. I sat down knowing next to nothing about the series; I finished it in two sittings, all teary-eyed and breathless by the last episode. I had laughed, cried, and left a little skittish to enter dark rooms.

The latest in the lineup of original Netflix programming, Stranger Things takes the viewer down the rabbit hole and back to 1983, where paranormal horrors are unleashed on the small town of Hawkins, whisking away a young Will Byers in the process. We follow several characters in the aftermath: the intrepid, geeky trio of Will's friends. his despairing family, the gruff town sheriff.a starry-eyed teenager, and a mysterious girl with a shaved head and love of Eggos. It’s beyond a decent description though. It is a love letter to Poltergeist, E.T., The Goonies, and the original Star Wars trilogy, but as universal a story as any those films put together.

And Stranger Things is a, well, strange entry to the ranks of American television. Rounding off at just eight episodes for its first season, it’s quite short, especially when compared to its genre counterparts like Supernatural or The X-Files. But it works, and works where many, many paranormal series have failed in the past: it tries and succeeds in telling a story.

Not to say other series don’t have merits- they do. But in an effort to keep people hooked a little longer, many series lose their heart along the way. Recent trends find TV shows, and movies, and even books hyper-extended with convoluted plot-lines, unresolved character arcs, and cliffhanger finales thinly veiled as sales bills for the next season/film/novel. We are knee-deep in a media that relies very heavily on the sequel, second season, and whatever viewership can be garnered from a returning audience. The resulting content can be… lackluster, at best. The aforementioned Supernatural is often found guilty of stretching its story and characters to the point that Sam and Dean’s adventures mean very little after a few seasons. In the popular Once Upon a Time, its witty fairytale-based plot and sometimes dynamic characters became buried by cameos and romance plots. Game of Thrones veered off of Martin’s plot recently to keep the series going, and is fairly critiqued for overusing sex and violence to sell itself (this is also fair game for shows like Outlander, Penny Dreadful, and many of their MA-kin).

Stranger Things challenges this trend with bold, broad strokes, opening in cinematic fashion and capturing your attention for the next eight episodes. Finishing its story during that time, which surprised me. From all the anguished comments online about the ending, I expected a cruel and unusual cliffhanger. The ending is though, without spoilers, a tidy and complete thing. A few bread crumbs are left to keep the series open, but the majority of Stranger Things season 1 is wrapped up by the final episode. It occurred to me right then the Stranger Things doesn’t really leave you waiting; it leaves you wanting. You experience the show. You become enveloped in all its rich 80’s culture, music and pop culture throwbacks alike. Your heart wrenches for every character in some way, and you’ve picked a few favorites by the end (Joyce Byers and Mike are mine- and hey! Who doesn’t love Eleven?). You care deeply and wonderfully about what happens to these fictional people, and within a very short amount of time. I'm inclined to compare it, in more modern terms, to films like Guardians of The Galaxy. The Marvel-verse is often more about interconnected movies, and very few of its films stand alone. This is why I love Guardians above all of the the other Marvel films, because it maintains a simple story and uses strong, lovable characters to keep us entertained, rather than becoming tangled in an extended narrative.

Masterful solo storytelling is its own art form, and there is a lot to be gleaned from series like Stranger Things and its bravery. We are not staying for an over-teased romance arc or a long shot of the lead actress in a sheerer-than-needed dress. Something else draws us in. As a writer, you cannot help but notice that the series’ plot is simple, but deep. I think of plots a little like plots of earth, flat at a glance, but deeper and richer when we dig. Each character Stranger Things is a person with their own motive, each sweep of the plot is surprising and evocative. By allowing the story and characters to carry over to the audience, the series becomes more complex and enriching without extending beyond its means. We stay for three boys’ journey to find their friend, and we are rewarded for it.With an expanding fanbase and the recently announced 2nd season, you cannot help but admire the little series for winning people over simply by telling a good story. It does my heart good as a storyteller, because it reminds us of something important in good writing. Maybe this show will do more than remind you that “Africa” by Toto is pretty awesome, or create a resurgence in D&Dcampaigns (c’mon, you know it’s about to happen). Maybe Stranger Things will set a new stage for entertainment, promising quality in the face of quantity. Because depth and heart are all you really need to draw the viewers in, and make stories truly memorable.

​Let’s take a moment to appreciate the little device you have sitting in your lap, or in your hands, or however you are reading this article. The advent of the Internet is wonderful, changing the way most of us live, learn, work, and generally function. I was around 11 when I first stumbled onto Fanfiction.net, roving the internet for fan sites about Teen Titans and Kim Possible. 11-year-old me had been writing for awhile, putting down small stories about unicorns and my pets on construction paper. Fan fiction was an eye-opener though, cracking open a wide, wild world of writing communities and editing teams. This is why I would spend the next five years working out of several fandoms and writing groups with my own creations. Fanfiction was a weirder spot for fans then and gets a bad reputation to this day. A wasted effort at best, and a niche corner for fandom smut at worst. Fanfiction writers still had a bad reputation with the publishing company I worked for, which was ironically inspired into existence of one of the world’s most successful fanfics, 50 Shades of Grey.

I’m far from alone though. The art of fanfiction dates back to old fanzines and stories passed around conventions. Many published writers talk about their early experiences writing fanfiction, and as the next generation comes into its own, many of its young authors describe similar early days writing for Sailor Moon, Star Wars, and Harry Potter bases. Fanfiction has changed into a sort of training ground for authors, allowing them to set their own building blocks for fanbases and inspire their own new headcanons. The experiences and efforts I personally had with fanfiction made my later transition into novelist a lot smoother, and my own first steps into real marketing easier. The fun, fandom-based things I did truly shaped the way I write and create today, and so, here are the five best things I took away from those days.

1. Your Plot; Someone’s Else World

In Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook, there are several great pieces about ‘playacting’ and the costumes authors wear while they are learning their craft. The articles describe the importance of recognizing that we will emulate in order to come into out own voice. I’ll be frank when and say no one is original to start: we do not come into creativity like gifts from God, we learn it by way of imitation. We are Dr. Frankensteins in our own right, taking pieces and parts from the stories we love and clumsily stitching them together, Fanfiction might be the safest place to practice this art since it is not only embraced, but considered a major part of said writing. Characters and landscapes can be borrowed in favor of crossovers or AUs, giving young writers a space to experiment with their own ideas, masquerading under a story that already has the stage set. The same rule applies to RP writing in ways (something I’ve also done), which allows participants to craft stories in a pre-crafted world, giving them the freedom to experiment and make mistakes as needed. Good writing, after all, only comes from the lessons we learn about how not to write.

2. Early Critique

No one likes critique, I suspect. We, at best, understand that critique is important to improvement and not usually personal. Nevertheless, there is always that moment before you open a new review or a message from a beta-reader- that second where your blood runs cold with dread. Fanfiction was no exception to that rule, and depending on where you found yourself in a writing community, you could expect as much critique as the average editor. There is art to giving an honest critique, and a humbleness you learn by taking one. Some of my earliest criticisms came from writing fanfics, and they were hard to take for awhile, though they benefited my work in the long run. I learned what was an important critique and what was not. They also toughened me up by the time I started sharing my original work, which still gets its fair share of critique; I was much better prepared at that point though (…mostly anyway).

3. Marketing

If one thing gives authors more anxiety than critique, it is the prospect of marketing. The complicated, technical, and infuriating world of promotion has only grown with the advent of social media, opening avenues for wider audiences with every new profile we build. One of the earliest lessons you gather when writing on sites like Fanfiction (and even bigger sites like AO3 and Wattpad) is that marketing is key. Outreach is your friend and community building as much your strength as the words you write. Without realizing, I got very good at planting roots and gaining readers, making efforts to be a part of the fandom and making connections along the way. A finger on the pulse of your readers and fellow fans means you can predict what they may want, and what’s more, how your voice fits amongst them.

4. The Mary Sue (or Marty Stu)

You’re looking at that title, and probably thinking: “There’s nothing remotely positive about a Mary Sue! They suck as characters!”And I agree with you, which is why they need to be written. At 13, I had two original magically-inclined characters for both my fanfictions and RPs that were almost identical in power, personality, and appearance (including colored highlights/black hair, since “you won’t let me do that myself, Mom.”) The Mary Sue and Marty Stu are natural parts of creative process, since all first writing endeavors become autobiographical- you don’t escape that. In a lot of ways, you never really escape it, since characters continue to represent parts of yourself: the Mary Sue is just hyperactive, undeveloped version of this. Much like borrowed landscapes/stories, fanfics are one of the safest places for young writers to unleash the self-insert character, giving a space to cobble together early characters and learn how characterization works. We may flinch at them now, but Mary Sues are the just early steps toward truly interesting characters. Expressing them is how we to grow out of them.

5. Writing for You

While a tad contradictory to all the previous talk about marketing, it’s good to remember that all writing is first and foremost about you, and what makes you happy. Stories are often thankless, tireless, busy things, with little reward for efforts (even when it comes to published work). Fanfiction is written for free and sometimes, in the wake of big numbers and larger readerships, we get wrapped up in putting out what we know will bring crowds. The few times I tried this almost killed my interest in any writing, given how passionless my fanfic work became. Readers are amazing, and popularity is always fun. Still, no matter the base you work with and no matter how popular you are, it is so important to write what you love. That spark is what keeps us writing through fanfiction and well beyond it, when all else fails. And really, skill reflects best when we are true to ourselves.

What are your experiences with writing fanfiction, and do they still reflect on your writing now? Are there any other benefits (or drawbacks) to a background in fanfiction?

The first time I flew on a plane, I was seven-years-old and headed to Disney World with my family. It was a pre-9/11 world, but flying still frightened me enough that I burst into tears as we prepared to take off. I still vividly remember a flight attendant handing me a plastic winged metal to mark my first time in the air, all smiles and cheer. I haven’t been scared to fly since.

Still, I said goodbye to my family and crossed through the TSA on June 19th, 2016. I was bawling by the time I found my gate. Some things don’t change, I suppose.Eight months ago, I got one of those “golden opportunities” that everyone likes talking about. The kind that don’t happen to people, realistically anyway. The CEO of a indie publishing website I had long inhabited offered me a community management job. I often joked that this job was “$11 an hour to play on Facebook all day”, but I managed the entirety of the company’s social media, most author-related projects, and generally kept their community happy. Big job, and it got even bigger when I was invited to spend two weeks working at the home office in Berlin. Another two weeks to do whatever I wanted in Europe. A few months of extensive planning later, I had flights and hotels lined up for Berlin, Rome, Paris, London, and Dublin. I was traveling abroad for the first time, and I was going it alone.

“Are you sure about that?” I got asked this question (and variations of it) a lot. I got asked if my longtime boyfriend couldn’t join me. I got disbelieving looks, because I’m 5’2, a young woman, and generally considered what we would call a "country mouse." In the small percentage of Americans that travel abroad, less travel alone and even less of those are women.

I remembered that while I sat at my gate, wiping my eyes as I blared Amanda Palmer over headphones and watched the plane I was about to board.“Am I sure about this?” The answer was no.

I boarded my plane anyway.

Since that first flight two months ago, I have become hopelessly in love with transit days. The in-between days of trains, airport transfer buses, and plane seats. They are slow, and draggy, yet enthralling for the simple act of travel. The anticipation of a new country and an imagination running wild for what you’ll see when you get there (you are always wrong, and it is always awesome). When I finally made the hop from Newark to Berlin, I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn't know Berlin was so diverse, beautiful and so very huge. My first stop in Europe, with the least amount of English of all my stops. Two weeks there on my own. No pressure.

The first three days were the scariest. I quickly discovered my former employer was disinterested in helping me navigate the basics of living in Germany, so early hurdles such as the U-Bahn (Berlin’s metro system) and figuring my way around signs dotted my time in the city. To a tune of wicked jet lag, I worked long office hours and commuted back and forth across the vast city. One night heading back, the German writing in the metro turned me around and I ended up on the opposite side of Berlin around midnight. The metro shuts down at 1am. It was a rather unnerving adventure getting home. I also had the pleasant experience of finding out that my train ticket, which my employer picked for me, was only worth a week’s worth of U-Bahn rides, but only after after a 60 euro fine and an anxious trip to the German equivalent of the DMV. I had never gotten a ticket in my life: this one makes for an interesting story, at the very least.

At the same time, I quickly discovered how beautiful Berlin was. Majesty and creativity marry beautifully in the streets, where street art dots anything it can touch and history seeps out of the city's pores. Brass stolperstein mark Jewish lives on the cobblestone. East Side Gallery sprawls around its block with flooring imagery. I went to Brandenburg Gate on the same day as a football match, so the whole are had been transformed into a viewing area, complete with a truck-sized screen and food vendors. There was a thrill about joining the crowd of a thousand Berliners, passionate and joyful for every goal their team scored. Germany won the game, too.

There is a peace to Berlin, too. Due to its central position and policies, Germany has one of the most diverse populaces of any European country. Every day at my flat was a new one, sharing a building with college students from Germany, France, Haiti, Norway, Russia, South Africa, and yes, even America. We exchanged stories in the elevator, held doors, and offered helping hands where needed. I was offered food and, more often, beer when coming in at night. I found the same in the office, where my co-workers had flocked from all over the world. Our neighboring restaurant was run by a Russian family, who spoke only their native tongue and German. They called me the “pretty North European girl”, and smiled whenever I came in to order lunch with rough sign language. I also frequented a kiosk down the street (which are like gas station stores in America): the Turkish man that worked there had come from Istanbul two years before, with his young daughter. Our exchanges were awkward and messy until one day, when I apologized for my bad German while buying ice cream.

He shakes his head and says, “In my country, we say that when you eat and drink in a place, it is your home too.”

I think I visited him every day after that.​The instant understanding and compassion of Berlin was incredible, and humbling, because I kept thinking back to my home. Back where there had been screaming over immigrants from Mexico and Syria, whichever was the latest ‘threat’ to the American public. I thought about that as I wandered around this big city with little to no German experience, in a culture vastly different from my hometown of 10,000 people. I thought about the challenges I had living in such a place, on my own, for a mere two weeks. And then I considered what it would be to move here- to pack what I could carry and settle where no one spoke my language or knew my customs. Where everyone screamed for me to ‘go back where I came from’.

By the time my two weeks in Berlin were up, I had seen and done a great deal in the city. I had experienced so much of the beauty and strength of the city, and still, there was so much more left to experience. It was worth every second, difficult or otherwise. Given the chance, I would love to return to Berlin one day, and I'm so glad it was my first European experience. It helped set the stage for my next stop, Rome, and helped prepare me for the next two weeks of incredible travel.

I’ve likely had this conversation a hundred times now, at my local cafes or over Facebook, and always around October. They start around this time of year, well before November. People begin prepping Pinterest boards and stocking up on caffeine. Their social media fills with writing advice, cute blurbs tagged under “#nanowrimo2016”, vague posts about their big project.National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. The web writing sensation that begins on November 1st, and always comes with the intent to "get people writing." Your goal with NaNoWriMo is simple: reach 50,000 words before the end of the month. For those interested in the numbers, that's around 1,500 words a day, every day, for 30 days. Some amazing novels have actually come out of the NaNoWriMo scene: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell and The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern were both penned in 30 November days, YA author Marissa Meyer has used the month to start novels and novellas for her Lunar Chronicles series. Hundreds of great stories have made it to market, indie or otherwise, with the help of this challenge.I love all of these books so much.I still dislike NaNoWriMo.I really dislike NaNoWriMo.I dislike NaNo in the way American retail workers dislike Christmas.For a while, I couldn’t figure out what exactly it was that irked me about the writing challenge, since I had actually done it once or twice. Not in November, though: I had been in the middle of two different novels, in the middle of two different summers. I hit a point with every project where the momentum picks up the right way and I fly with the book, clipping through 1, 500-2,000 words a day. Each time is a delightful, restless, tea-fueled journey where I would write until dawn and exist almost solely on creative energy. Surely something like NaNoWriMo would be up my alley, given my own habits?But I’ve never joined in on NaNoWriMo or planned a new project around it, mostly because of the things I see NaNoWriMo evolve into, and some of the bad habits I see it create for fledgling authors. I’ve dissected some of these on my personal blog, but I think it’s time we dig into the issue of NaNoWriMo with a little more depth.So, back to the "I have an idea" part of NaNo. Because ideas are great: ideas are the seeds of good writing. Ideas are not books though, and it’s often difficult to gauge a project’s worth of time based on a few rough character descriptions and a summary you have pulled from an online prompt. Not dogging either (since I use them both, too), but these things do not a book make. These things can lead to a draft though, if you can sit down and write it.I find the “ass-in-chair-and-fingers-to-keys” part is where a lot of people trip up because they learn very quickly that writing 1,500 words a day isn’t easy as it looks, and it rarely looks that easy to begin with. I know authors that can churn out 2,000 words every day that they write: I know authors who put down 200 words once and awhile. Writing is as personal in pace as it is in style, so the techniques that work for some may not work for all. 1,500 words a day is a skill you learn with time, and not a needed skill for finishing a novel.“Writing books is easy. It’s only 50,000 words and I have the time.” To which I always sigh. These words always undercut two big parts about the novel.1. Writing books is the most artistic form of torturing yourself over imaginary people and situations. There are easier ways to entertain yourself, I'll be honest with you.2. Most books aren’t 50,000 words. We can talk about The Great Gatsby and minimal novel length all we want, but modern novels, especially in fantasy and science fiction, tend to go over the 100,000 word mark and well beyond it. Also, novels do not end after you put “The End” on your first draft. Editing can (and will) take up time.One of the biggest issues I take with the NaNo mindset is that it’s used as a springboard to “get people writing” without giving people the proper disclaimer that writing doesn’t end or begin with writing itself. Between the planning, drafting, editing, and beta-reading, it’s taken near three years to finish my first novel and draft a second. A month of work stops being a meaningful thing when a project begins to span over years. That doesn’t discount the amazing free-fall of one month, but most writing projects expand well beyond that point, and I’ve watched so many new writers miss that.“I don’t need to make a plan though. I can wing it.” To which I will tell you no, no you can’t. Some of us can fly by the seat of our pants, but but most of us aren’t organized enough to finish a draft, much less in a month. This is the very mindset that fuels the essays written the night before their deadline, or the millions of half-baked romance e-novellas on Kindle: minimal effort for the same expected payoff. Prep and planning and time can mean the difference between dropping a draft at 5,000 words and pushing over 150,000 words (as much of a pain as the latter is to edit- better to have more than less). When we talk about these successful authors like Rowell or Meyer, who use NaNo to complete drafts, we should also recall that Rowell and Meyer are authors with previous experience. Authors who had several novels under their belt and a grasp of their style/voice. It almost sounds discouraging to use their works as banners for a project that’s targeted at fresh-faced writers. It sells and simplifies a process so much bigger than 50,000 words and a few nightly writing binges. A process that is rarely ever as rewarding or glamorous as the Rowlings and Martins of the world make it out to be. Most all of us can create, but being an actual author is a very different skill.So, to you all out there, as prepare your outlines, make character sheets, and finalize those writing playlists, you have my best regards for your November drafts. Remember though, that all books are much bigger than NaNoWriMo. If writing novels were as simple as 30 days of work, it would be a much less demanding, selfish, and beautiful act.

It’s a fine time to be a writer, isn’t it? With the changing tides of the 21st century and the flexibility of self-publishing, the average writer is free to publish and share more diverse fiction with the rest of the world. Multi-cultural and racially diverse main characters are a slow- but sure norm. LGBT representation has become recurrent and important part of the media. The possibilities are an endless cornucopia for the growing number of open-minded readers and viewers.

The problem with these characters is not the characters themselves, but the lack of character they often present. The banner of progressive writing is used to defend these types, citing that the help bring us away from the more cliché male and female roles that sometimes overtake the majority of fiction. Indeed, we’ve earned every reason to create more diversity than the strapping hero and swooning damsel, but just like these old characters, Strong Females and Sensitive Males fail to be the thing characters most deserve being: people.

My favorite (or least favorite, if you like) examples of these types are from books, for the life of me, I tried to enjoy. Tessa Gray of The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare has all the makings of an interesting character, her strength tempered by Victorian age manners and her troubling magical ability forced into her life by the story’s antagonists. During the first novel of the trilogy, Tessa’s quiet struggle with her new magic and the search for her missing brother set the building blocks for an incredibly strong, clever, and complex heroine. This potential is then scraped in the second and third book, where her ability and character development take the back-burner for the story’s love triangle. She is forever described as ‘strong-willed’ and ‘clever’ by the main cast, but her character becomes inconsistently powerful, reduced to a few fight scenes, melodrama, and the unearthing of her backstory. She actually spends a third of the last book captured by the main villain, only to unleash the power she had “all along” on him in the last few chapters- after her love interest has shown up. The resulting finale feels lackluster, and Tessa has changed very little aside from what physical (or magical) strength she presents.A lesser known book, Mary Lindsay’s Ashes on The Waves, is the home of Liam MacGregor, the troubled lead of a Edgar Allen Poe-based fantasy story, where murder and romance overtake the peace of a secluded Irish village. I could write another blog on the problems surrounding this book (which included a frequent, jarring change between first and third person in the middle of chapters), but let’s focus on Liam for now. Secluded by the superstitious villagers and deformed from birth, our main character spends the majority of the book doing one of three things: lamenting over his isolation, pining over his horrible love interest, or reading editions of Keats and Wordsworth. What could be sympathetic and likable quickly turns to character decay as we are reminded again and again just how sensitive Liam is. By the end of the novel, we know very little else about Liam other than his sensitivity.

The problem with both of these characters, as I’ve realized, is the idea at the core of their traits: that sensitivity is feminine and strength is masculine. And here is where we fail over and over as writers, when we choose to write characters that detract from the norm. Ignoring the presence of patriarchy and its effects on a real world setting can leave a story discombobulated. Sensitivity and strength are not mutually inclusive, and to call them forth with the stereotypical traits of the other gender does not actually defeat the gender stereotype. You just enforce it tenfold.

I have never read a better bit of advice than “characters are people first.” Just like people, they rarely fall to one side of traits or the other, and exemplify strength in all sorts of colorful ways. We are more complex than the archetypes we create; we are creatures full of dimensions and shadows that deserve the attention of writing. Diversity is often more than reversing the expected traits of a particular gender/race/nationality, but challenging oneself to dig deeper, finding the person a character is outside of their labels and creeds. Only then do we truly stopping breaking stereotypes badly.